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Everything posted by Marco1019

All of the non-gaming stuff in my life ramped up significantly to where I postponed my Twitch show on a few occasions.

While work was rather hectic, it was still going well. However, it remained hectic throughout these summer months; I had to do a double-take when I realized it was the 2nd half of August.

Unrelated, but no less important: I went for a Wellness Visit (Physical) for the first time in far too long. I went for the proverbial full tune-up including a tetanus shot. (Wow, that part really sucked. I'm not going to sugarcoat it at all. You feel it for 2-3 days, and my body sure felt it.) The good news is that all of my vitals are normal and test results were negative. So let this serve as a reminder: Be sure to get a check-up especially if you're getting up there in age like I am.

I was hoping to stream an episode before an upcoming trip but that won't happen, unfortunately. I realized that I really hadn't kept up on any retro gaming news and world records, and I'd rather get back into the swing of things before getting back on Twitch. I had to put the MGL aside (I started off well but would have likely faded given the list of games chosen for this quarter, but I was having a lot of fun).

I'm glad to see that atari.io is still up and running smoothly and that the community here remains positive. I look forward to joining a Wednesday night chat in the near future.

So after a lot of nudging, I've taken the plunge and starting competing in the latest installment of the MGL (MAME Gaming League). It's a fun tournament that is free and open to all gamers worldwide. You can enter at any time.

This is from Paul Hornitzky (OOO), who runs the MGL:

"There will be 9 games played over 8 weeks, competing world wide on the most challenging and toughest video games of all time. 2 games will be released at the start, then 1 game each week, with the final 2 games released at the same time for the finale. Games are only open for 17 days each, so gamers must play their best in that time and post their scores before the game is closed. At the end of each MGL, points will be accumulated for each gamer toward the World Championship of eSports Scoreboard."

The first two games for this quarter are Space Invaders and Mr. Do!

Fellow gamer IllSeaBass finished 3rd in the 39th installment and had been urging me to participate. I finally caved in & figured it was worth a shot. I don't expect to win - I'm sure there will be some games that I've either never played or were never good at playing - so my goal is to not embarrass myself lol.

I spent most of the weekend sleeping & rest. I understand we're in July now hahaha. I spent most of this evening editing and preparing for tomorrow night's show. Episode 16 of Retro With Marco will air tomorrow night at 9pm ET / 6pm PT! I'll have some shoutouts including:

Which speedrunner had 2 WRs beaten within a 3-day span

Which gamers broke WRs set back in 2010

Which speedrunner broke 2 WR ties by a grand total of 2.1 seconds

All that, plus a quick look at Polymega as well as the return of the MGL and Yolympics.

I'm so sorry for missing the weekend pizza party. The irony is that we ordered pizza for dinner on Friday night, but I was so fatigued that I not only forgot to take pics of the pie (it was a small 'special', fully loaded), but I played MAME instead of Atari! Oops!

This game has elements of Targ & Spectar from the early 1980s except the enemies are on the periphery as well as the asteroids flying at various angles.
I'd like to give this working title a little shine on my show this coming Tuesday as I'll be featuring a few other games in development for other systems.

I will be moving Retro With Marco to every other Tuesday at 9pm ET / 6pm PT. This is for non-gaming reasons as my Wednesdays won't be providing as much flexibility as my Tuesdays. I'm also hoping that starting an hour earlier will also draw a few more viewers.

As of now, Episode 15 is slated for June 19. I'll make an announcement once my programming change is official.

Thanks, Justin! I also talked about it with a few other gamers recently, including Michael of Settle It On The Screen. Michael will have to scale his show back to monthly and is cool with my moving to another night; we had originally agreed to stream on alternate Wednesdays.

There's plenty of good streaming on Twitch this weekend, including the Gala Gala tournament from Australia, and Competithon which is a 100% speedrunning marathon event. Check them out & show your support!

I owned the XBAND modem for the Genesis and it was a lot of fun for myself & my friends. We would play each other & other gamers nationwide on Madden NFL 95. We were usually in the Top 10 for wins every week; there was one week when there were three of us on the Top 10.
I start chatting with one Madden gamer who, it turned out, lived in Manhattan at the time. He figured I was into anime - my handle was Vegeta. (I'm glad I snagged it early because there were a lot of DBZ fans who wanted my handle.) We talked anime & football when he told me about an anime convention called AnimEast '95. It was held in NJ and he was planning on going to meet with a few other XBAND users. I took a NJ Transit bus to New Brunswick which turned out to be fortuitous as the bus stopped at the parking garage of the hotel where the convention was held. It made for a fun time meeting everyone in person & hanging out. We would then get together in NYC to shop for games and also play at a friend's apartment.

Long work week is over and I've finally - FINALLY - installed MAME on my iMac. I played Punch-Out for the first time in about two years & had a lot of fun. It'd be nice to break 1MM. I reached 850K before I had to put gaming on the back burner for a long stretch last year.

Some of last week's shoutouts included new records from @Garrett Holland , @linuxriverrat , and @fredb999 , along with a trio of GTA; San Andreas speedruns by lelreset. This week's shoutouts will include:

Another trio of WRs by a total of 35 seconds

A decade-old WR beaten by 350K

A Nintendo Switch WR that is a feather in the cap for one particular gamer

I came across this article from Hackaday which was posted on Thursday:
https://hackaday.com/2019/05/02/twenty-five-years-since-the-end-of-commodore/
The article also contains a link to a YouTube video showing the last day at a Commodore Amiga Factory in Pennsylvania.

I took apart one of my Atari 2600 joysticks and discovered that the up and down buttons still "click", but the left and right ones do not. It may explain why I wasn't able to turn corners in Ms. Pac-Man. 😂🤣

I will try to give this one a go on the emulator side. OpenEmu uses the Bliss core which appears to be the only emulator available for Mac OS X.
I just noticed that @Atari Creep used OpenEmu so I'm leaning strongly towards submitting a score.